


I'll love the world like I should

by MuseofWriting



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Gen, Minor Violence, Past Character Death, Past Torture, Reincarnation, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28020087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: Sometimes it's just about saving one person. Just one ordinary person. Because if that doesn't matter, then what does?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	I'll love the world like I should

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FluffyBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FluffyBlue/gifts).



> (how the fuck does one tag origfic)
> 
> This is part of my gradual crossposting of old tumblr fic onto AO3. This particular piece was inspired by [this post](https://fluffyblue-multifandommess.tumblr.com/post/170879717927/im-kind-of-tired-of-there-always-being-some-grand) by my friend. This is a somewhat revised and expanded version of what was originally posted on tumblr (now with more backstory! character has more complex motivations! lol).
> 
> Please be gentle I am so self-conscious about my original writing -_-;;;

I’ve never wanted to call myself a hero. My only real superpower is being able to live a stupidly long time, and I’m not even particularly good at that. Sure, I’ve learned a few tricks along the way — I can pick a lock, cook without measuring spoons, I know enough to use enchanted objects without blowing myself up, and whatever language you speak I probably know it. Every third or fourth life I’ll have a really good run of it physically, learn how to do gymnastics or how to shoot an arrow, and losing muscle memory is irritating beyond measure but I get back to practicing those skills every now and again. I can get myself out of a tight spot if I need to, is the point, but when purple electricity monsters try to eat the universe or some insanity like that, I am not your guy. I’ve got friends who shoot fire and ice from their hands or who can sing songs that shatter your soul. The flashy ones, the ones in masks and armor twirling swords made of light and leaping off of rooftops, they’re the “save the world” people.

That doesn’t mean I don’t _help_. Live for a few millennia and you’re bound to pick up something useful, like the last time purple electricity monsters were around they were a lot smaller but they had this weak spot right under their left eye for some reason… I’m happy to be a consultant. I even go out and fight sometimes, if I really have to. I die probably three-quarters of the time — I am, very literally, only human, except for the part where the Grim Reaper likes to play fetch with my soul. Too much magic burns up my body like any other human and I can only get as strong or fast as any other average Joe, if that’s a life where I’ve even decided it’s worth the effort (live for a few millennia, and you’re bound to hit a lifetime or two where it just seems like absolutely nothing matters, and maybe if your body wastes away to nothing your soul finally will too). Against purple electricity monsters there’s just not that much I can _do_.

Still. I must have an altruistic streak as unkillable as the rest of me. Or I’m just dumb.

People come to us for help sometimes. We have sort of a front office, one that I’m usually left running. I’ve tried to convince my friends to help recruit volunteers for it, but we’re all a little paranoid about anyone without powers. We dip in and out of favor with governments and the public far too often. That front office will go dormant for years when we go underground for our own safety. But sometimes we get people stumbling in, looking for help.

The girl with dark skin and tightly coiled hair took almost an hour to tell her story, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. Her girlfriend, Selene, had gone missing after an earth demon destroyed almost half the city a few months ago. She was convinced she wasn’t dead, because she’d been well outside the area that got leveled, but the police hadn’t been able to find any trace of her.

My friends glanced at each other, shook their heads, apologized. They didn’t have time to track Selene down. There were world-ending threats on the horizon, shadow kings and a madwoman who could bend time and a fanatic mind-reader brainwashing entire towns. They edged away from the girl and her teary eyes. “This is a job for the police,” one of them said. “We can’t track down every person who goes missing. There aren’t enough of us.”

“The police believe she’s dead. They refuse to go looking for her unless they have some kind of lead.”

“Honey, we’re superheroes, but none of us are omniscient. If detectives don’t know where to start looking for her, there’s not really anything else we would be able to do.”

The girl just stood there with her lip quivering as we got a call about some of the fanatic’s followers attacking a bank. They filed out, masks on, and I turned off my radio. They didn’t need my help for this one.

“Sit down,” I told the girl. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

She didn’t say a word as I handed her a mug, just took a very slow sip from it. A couple tears dripped off her eyelashes.

“I don’t know who else to ask for help,” she said.

I’m not even sure she was really talking to me. She probably — hopefully — didn’t have a clue who I was. She probably thought I was just some guy who ran tech support for superheroes on my weekends. The quintessential civilian sidekick. Maybe I should get kidnapped sometime, for the look of the thing.She had no reason to believe I could help her. I could have ushered her out when she finished her tea and never thought of her again. Unfortunately, like I said, there must be an altruistic streak in me that runs deeper than my bones.

“When _exactly_ did she disappear?” I asked.

“We were on the phone as the attack was happening,” she said dully. “I was out of the city and I wanted to make sure she was okay. She promised she was nowhere near any of the chaos. We were just talking, reassuring each other that everything was going to be fine, and then there was a burst of static, and the line went dead. And then she was just gone. The news came through that the fight was over a couple minutes later.”

I was silent for a moment. Selene wasn’t the only one who had vanished after the attack, but the earth demon had turned half the city over. Everyone assumed most of the missing people were just buried too deep to find.

“She may have been caught in a magical backwash when the earth demon was killed,” I said. “It could have sent her into the land of the Fae. Creatures of the earth do that sometimes.” The girl’s head snapped up.

“How do I get her back?” she asked breathlessly.

“You don’t,” I said shortly, collecting her mug. “It’s been too long. She’ll have eaten their food. She’ll be bound to them by now.” The girl pressed her lips together, drawing back the tears in her eyes. I turned my back, trying to give her a moment of privacy, busying myself with cleaning up the tea things.

“Then how do I go to her?” My hands stilled, hot water sliding soapsuds down my fingers.

“I’m not telling you that,” I said. “You don’t want to go to Fae. Trust me. It won’t make either of you happy to see each other there, even if you manage to find her.”

“You can’t know that,” she said. Her voice was hard as diamond. I set the mug beside the sink and turned to look at her.

“I do.”

Our eyes held for a long moment before she dropped her gaze. I don’t know if she could read the rock-solid knowledge in my eyes and voice, but it wasn’t just a certainty of opinion. No human is ever happy in Fae — not until they’re not human anymore.

“Then I don’t care,” she said. “Tell me how to go there. If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out some other way. I’ll— I’ll wander into fairy rings and sleep in forests and—”

“And die of pneumonia long before any fairy ever takes interest in you,” I answered. Her jaw clenched.

“Thank you for the tea,” she said, standing. “I think I better go now.”

I go through cycles of how I feel about most of the world. Sometimes I hate all of them, wasting away time being idiots. Sometimes that’s what makes me love them the most. Live for a few millennia, and you’re bound to do some stupid shit. It’s human nature, as far as I can tell. Especially where there’s a pair of eyes that look at you like no one else does.

“Show me a picture,” I said. The girl stopped, already halfway out the door.

“Why?” she asked.

“You can’t get her back,” I said. “But I might be able to.”

“Why?” she asked again.

Because there was once someone I tried to die for. Because if I can convince you I might save her, then at least I can stop you from burning your soul for no reason. Because I’m ancient and nothing matters to me but this still matters to you and your eyes remind me of the days when I felt the same way. Because it’s the right thing to do.

“I have vacation days coming up and Fae is nice this time of year.”

Her face spasmed with fury. “Don’t mock me,” she said. The diamond was back in her voice.

“I’ve been to Fae before,” I said, placating. “It’s rare they’ll give a human up, but I have a favor or two I could call in. If you go, you won’t find her, and you’ll lose yourself as well. Let me try.”

She hovered in the doorway so long I was about to give her up for lost when she pulled a photo out of her purse.

“I printed it, in case you guys agreed to look for her,” she mumbled.

The girl in the picture had freckles smattered across her face like a constellation. Her nose was slender and her eyes were deep, warm brown. I swallowed. Selene. The fairies would not part with her easily.

“I’ll do my best,” I said. She threw her arms around my neck and sobbed into my shoulder. I patted her awkwardly on the back, and let her stammer out thanks before I sent her on her way.

I’ve tried to keep my name out of history at large. Like I said, I do try to _help_ , but I try to keep myself in the irrelevant footnotes, unnamed, unremembered. Still, of course some stories have leaked out. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been captured, cut up and tortured and poked and prodded by people looking for — immortality? Honestly it’s never clear to me. I don’t know how I do what I do. I don’t remember the space between death and rebirth. There’s never anything I can tell them, except that immortality is a fucking nightmare. And my particular brand is the worst option. It baffles me why anyone would want it. Maybe it’s just because I’m an easier target than the handful of true Undying, the ones who don’t have to cycle through bodies and deal with the horrors of childhood and puberty and aging _endlessly_.

Sometimes, of course, they want other things — information on history, or magic, or creatures gone nearly extinct they want to hunt down. It’s the only thing longevity really gives you: I know a lot of random shit. Some people think I’m invaluable. Whenever I have to actually do something dangerous, though, I mostly just get lucky. Or I don’t, and I die, and it’s not usually a big deal. If I was going to find Selene, I’d have to be a bit smarter than I normally bother being.

Getting into Fae is frighteningly easy when you don’t mean to. People end up there by accident all the time. _Trying_ to go there, however, that can kill you. You’re about as likely to end up torn to shreds by raw magic in the space between, or just wandering around in forests for months on end without ever hitting the right spot.

But like I said, I know a lot of random shit.

A full moon, a particular forest, some dewdrops, blink at just the right moment, and the light _shifts_. Everything becomes silver and shadows. The moon burns your skin cold. Lights appear through the trees, inviting, alluring. It wasn’t a hard ritual. So, for the first time in a few centuries, I found myself in Fae.

There are other dangers in Fae besides just the fairies. There are creatures that stalk the woods and like the taste of flesh. There are quicksand pits of shadow that can suck you down and shred you apart. There are other things, undefined beings of light, of dark, and of earth, that ask you riddles and barter for the magic stinging your skin.

I had brought a gleaming silver knife with a bone handle I’d become quite fond of in a previous life. The hilt no longer fit in my hand perfectly, but its ridges were still achingly familiar. I wore a belt with a minor shield spell on it, and a bracelet with three bursts of fire magic before it would need the sun to replenish.

Of course, the worst things in Fae are the half-made ghosts.

Sometimes humans do escape. They run from the courts, ignoring their bleeding blistered feet and twisting bones. The fairies rarely bother to go after the ones who get too far. There are always new faces to take their place, docile, desperate, children snatched from cradles or those who came to barter. The problem is, once you’ve run from the courts, you still haven’t truly escaped. And it is much, much harder to get back into the human world than it is to stumble into Fae. So they wander, lost, through the enticing lights and the ravenous shadows, growing emaciated and insane. The ones that are still almost entirely human die mercifully quickly. But those that are half-fairy already, they survive. They break the shadows with their hands. They eat the cold moonlight. And they attack anything that finds them.

I burned three fingers off my left hand using a binding spell to fend off a ghost. He struggled and gnashed his teeth and I plunged the silver knife into his heart. His blood was bone white.

I’m not sure how long it took me to reach one of the courts. Time moves strangely in Fae. I was hungry, but I had ages before that became unbearable. The smell of their feast was enticing, because of course it was, and they were expecting me, because of course they were. The Lady of the Court sat on a throne to greet me, a shifting cloak of rippling leaves around her shoulders.

“Welcome to our table, traveler,” she said. “You must be hungry. Sit, eat and drink.”

“Thank you, but no.”

Her mouth twitched in a slight smile. It was worth a try with everyone, I supposed. Perhaps it worked more often now, when fewer people believed in magic or knew the rules.

“True, we ought to have introductions first,” she said, her voice a comfortable purr. “I am Lady Cassida of the Fall Court.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady Cassida. I’m—” I took a quick, steadying breath, and played my hand. “I’m Max.”

Here’s the thing about fairies: they are one of the very few things left in the world that I consider an actual threat. Sure, I needed to stay alive to find Selene anyway, but I had to tread carefully here for my own sake. Fairies, you see, are one of very few beings left that can barter for your soul. Owning any soul in its entirety is an almost incalculable wealth. Owning _my_ soul?

Fairies would sell the skin off their backs to own me.

I could have lied about who I was, but if they had found out… the consequences of that would have been beyond disastrous. And fairies are dangerously good at spotting lies. It would’ve been hard enough to convincingly explain my presence at the court, even if I managed to avoid any stupid slips like revealing I could speak the Fae tongue. So for once, I’d take advantage of whatever dubious perks my messy immortality could confer, and hope to whatever gods people were praying to these days that I could avoid being tricked into a deal I didn’t want to make.

Lady Cassida was reeling, so I took the opportunity. “I’m looking for a girl. She would have arrived about three months ago, by human calculations. Her name is Selene.”

She flashed me a toothy smile and said, “Max the Reincarnate? I didn’t realize— the pleasure is all mine.” She snapped her fingers and an elegant chair appeared beside her. “You must talk with me first. You must tell me about your lives.”

I inclined my head, doing my best to be respectful without making any offers. “I’m humbled by your interest, Lady Cassida, but I’m afraid my errand will not wait. I am here to find Selene.”

“Max, surely you know not to be rude to fairies? I want to hear about your life. Tell me about Simon.”

I was prepared for it, because fairies are smart and cruel and completely merciless. I knew she would ask that question, because of course she would ask that question. Never mind the literally thousands of people I have loved and lost over all my lives. It’s always Simon. They always want to know about Simon. Fairies, demons, the people who string me up to find the secret to reincarnation, they all ask me about Simon.

I wasn’t prepared for it, because I am never, ever prepared to hear his name.

Live for a few millennia and you’re bound to think your skin is solid rock. Live for a few millennia and you’ll forget a lot of shit. Live for a few millennia and you’ll find someone whose gentle kiss you can still feel on the back of your neck centuries after they’re gone.

Her smile widened.

“I hear you have a memory of the two of you recorded. Is that true?”

“We stored a memory that the two of us shared inside a locket. We used it to help me remember who I was, in the lifetimes where my memories don’t come back.” That wasn’t exactly a secret. Well, it had been, once, but too many people had found out about it after Simon didn’t have the locket anymore. So it hardly seemed worth keeping from her.

“When don’t your memories come back?” She leaned forward. The fascination glimmered ruthlessly in her eyes.

“There are a lot of reasons I might not remember without help,” I said warily. Actually, I always needed a trigger to get the memories rolling, but it varied whether that was hearing familiar birdsong or needing them magically slapped into me. The latter was what the locket was for: the lives when no amount of déjà vu was enough to drag me back to the surface. Of course, that meant its intended function was moot now, because Simon was the only one who could recognize me when I didn’t know myself. “Lady Cassida,” I said, pushing the conversation back to the point, “do you know a girl named Selene?”

She sat back and pouted. “I might. Why do you want to know?” I licked my lips and parsed my words carefully.

“I want the fairies to release all hold on Selene, and to allow her to return with me to the human world,” I said. It had been too many years since I’d last heard the folktales told properly, the right words for negotiating with fairies memorized and passed on through the stories all children learned. Still, the sentence rung right in my ears, and I believed I’d remembered it correctly.

“If Selene has been here for three months, she will have to have eaten our food by now,” Lady Cassida said. She was smug enough that I felt a twinge of misplaced irritation. “I believe you know that eating our food means becoming one of us.”

“I also know it takes a year and a day before the change is permanent,” I countered. Lady Cassida tilted her head, considering me. The leaves of her cape rippled and changed colors.

“Let’s play a game,” she said.

“What’s the game?” I asked. Those words were acid on my tongue, but I couldn’t say I hadn’t been waiting for it. It was as inevitable as her asking about Simon.

“If you answer a question fully and honestly, I will give you something you want. Answer the first question, and I will tell you if we have Selene.”

I would know some things about fairies just from being around as long as I have. I’ve had occasion to meet a couple of them in less hostile situations, and to hear stories from some of the rare humans who deal with them and come out on top. I would dare count two of them as actual friends. I knew them better than just in passing, though. I knew the games they played with terrified, pained intimacy. My skin prickled with the memory of cold burning magic sunk into it over and over. I swallowed the urge to flee.

“Ask the question,” I said.

“Why Selene? Why rescue this one particular girl?”

“Someone asked me to.”

I can’t save everyone. I don’t save the world. As long as I’ve lived, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been responsible for saving the world. That’s other people’s jobs.

Lady Cassida snapped her fingers. A moment later, a girl came up the corridor, accompanied by another fairy. She was pale and her eyes roved across me with terror.

I can’t save the world. But I live over and over and over, and I see how much a single life can mean.

“If I answer another question, will you consider bargaining for her release?” Lady Cassida tapped her lip.

“What are you willing to bargain?” I breathed slowly. Offer too high, and they would take advantage. Offer too low, and they would raise the price for insulting them.

“You can have a memory. A memory _I pick_ ,” I rushed to add. Memories are pieces of the soul. A regular human memory would likely not be enough to get Selene back. But a piece of _my_ soul, no matter how small, would be far more valuable. Lady Cassida’s eyes gleamed.

“I want the memory you put in the locket,” she said. I almost laughed. Her eagerness made her sloppier than I’d ever seen a fairy.

“No,” I said. _Absolutely not, never in all the centuries I ever lived, I would not trade that memory for the stars in the sky_. I bit my tongue. Don’t give them extra words. The more words you say, the more they have to twist and change.

“Answer another question, then.”

“If I answer the question, what will you give me?”

“Safe passage out of Fae.”

“Safe passage out of Fae for both me _and_ Selene.”

“If you manage to win her.”

This fairy was young, I thought. She had to be young by fairy standards, because I’d been to the Fall Court the last time I was in Fae and hadn’t met her, and that was only some 350 years ago. She might be even younger than I had guessed, though, because any fairy worth their wings would have demanded a second question from me for adding Selene to the agreement. I would not let myself be confident. That way lay underestimation and disaster. Still, it gave me a tiny bud of hope.

I was trapped in the Winter Court for almost a century, once. I played their games and lost, over and over and over, while they tried to reshape me into one of them. But while the rest of me is only human, my soul won’t burn away, won’t be warped, won’t change its nature. It can’t. It’s immutable. It’s the only properly magical part of me, for all the good it does. I think they figured that out within the first five years, really, but still they kept me anyway, out of stubbornness or revenge or insanity. So I was stuck with them and their games, magic that wouldn’t take hold forced beneath my skin again and again, bones twisting and snapping back into place, moonlight wielded like a knife, until that abominable altruistic streak got me out.

A century is nothing compared to the years any fairy has to hone their deception and bargaining. On the other hand, fairies don’t lose very often. I lost tens of thousands of times, and losing is always the harsher lesson.

“ _When_ will Selene — provided I win her — and I get safe passage out of Fae?”

Lady Cassida sighed in exasperation. “Whenever you choose.”

“Deal.”

“What was your first life?” she asked.

As a rule of thumb, whenever I’m reborn, my memories start coming back between the ages of eight and twelve. It’s always different — sometime it’s all at once, sometimes in pieces, sometimes I think I’m insane for a bit, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all — but it’s never pleasant. If I ever decided to trust a psychologist with my life story, I’m sure they’d have a field day with whatever novel types of trauma my constant cycle of death, amnesia, and remembering has carved into me, and that’s before you get to the content of the memories themselves.

I’ve lied my teeth out to so many fathers and mothers who were expecting a normal kid and got me instead. I can never tell them the truth. I’ve tried. It never ends well. So instead, when I can, I drift apart from them as gently as possible. Half the time, though, once my memories return I just up and leave in the middle of the night because I can’t stand the pretense. There’s too much pain and knowledge in my head to pretend to be a carefree kid.

“Dying,” I answered Lady Cassida eventually. “I was in agony, burning with magic, and dying. That’s all I remember.” I knew more than that — but all my evidence was circumstantial. I don’t remember a thing about a boy named Glædwin, who he might have been or what he might have done. I only had my suspicions.

Lady Cassida pouted again.

“Name a memory you would be willing to trade,” she said. “I want it to be one you shared with Simon.”

I grit my teeth. Fairies are sadistic, and I knew this, but she seemed determined to drive the point home.

“I can share the memory of a night spent with another lover,” I offered. “Two centuries ago there was a man named Nazim—”

“Simon or no deal.”

There was an entirely ordinary morning. I was a slender man with pitifully wiry arm muscles and a very scraggly goatee that seemed to grow back in seconds after I shaved it. Simon was— as he always was. He found me at the kitchen table ungodly early, crumbling toast in my fingers. I told him I hadn’t been able to sleep. He climbed on my lap and kissed me silly. I picked up a piece of the toast and tried to feed it to him, but missed his mouth, the room still dark with the sun not yet risen. It mashed against his cheek instead, and Simon, in mock offense, picked up a piece of toast to throw in my face. We fell to helpless, stupid, half-awake giggling, toast crumbs scattering across the floor, until Simon finally disentangled himself and made us both eggs.

“A breakfast,” I told her. “One breakfast. That’s what I’m offering.” Lady Cassida pursed her lips.

“Could you pick something more meaningful?”

“Every single second I spent with him was meaningful.”

“I have one last question,” she said. “If you answer it, and give me the memory, then I’ll let you take Selene back to the human world.”

“What’s the question?” Her eyes gleamed again.

“If we had ever taken Simon, would you have offered us your entire soul in exchange for freeing him?”

I kept my face carefully blank. “You couldn’t have taken Simon. Not to make one of you. He wasn’t human. He already had magic. He couldn’t have become a fairy.”

“But imagine he was?” My eyes widened a fraction. _Imagination_ was a strange, borderline concept when it came to fairies. They couldn’t _lie_ , but telling fictions were something of a grey area, if they made it clear they were fictions. No one but the fairies themselves knew exactly what the rules were when it came to _imagination_ with them.

I could have lied. But they’re too good at spotting lies.

“I would have done whatever it took to save him, including burning all of Fae to the ground,” I said calmly. Lady Cassida reeled back, hissing.

“Are you _threatening_ Fae, boy?”

I kept my sigh quiet, and met her gaze. “I am older than you and every member of your court, Lady Cassida,” I said. My voice was quiet, calm. “I have lived more lives than every human you have here combined, burning up their own souls to become one of you. I know secrets you believe lost to time. I can speak the language of the shadow kings. You should be very grateful that I am _not_ threatening Fae.”

“You burned off three of your fingers restraining a ghost,” she snarled. I flexed my left hand.

“True,” I said. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have to burn through this body, right down to my soul. And I’d rather be able to take Selene home personally. Which is why it’s a good thing you have my answer to your question, and you can take the memory of the breakfast I offered you, and then our bargain will be complete, and there will be no tricks. Isn’t that a good thing?”

The fairy who had accompanied Selene into the room looked at Lady Cassida with wide eyes. For a fraction of a second, I prepared to sacrifice my entire left arm to throw up a more powerful shield than the belt offered me, but her anger broke across her face and she gestured Selene forward. Selene stumbled towards me, looking baffled.

“You have made an enemy of the Fall Court, Max,” Lady Cassida said. “We are patient. We will find you again, in a future life, and make you suffer.”

“Take care the Winter Court doesn’t find out, then,” I said absently, stripping off my jacket and wrapping it around Selene’s shoulders. She was shivering and barefoot. “I saved Lady Eira’s life as a child.”

I thought for a moment Lady Cassida was going to explode and braced myself for a shield spell once again. But then, she just wilted. Quite literally — the leaves on her cape turned brown and curled at the edges.

“You had that up your sleeve as a bargaining chip the entire time. Why play my game?” she asked wearily.

I would really rather not push my luck with asking Lady Eira for a favor, to be honest — that life debt was why they’d finally let me go, of course, and while I liked Eira a lot more than I liked most fairies, and that life debt entitled me to a lot more than just “sorry about torturing you for a human lifespan, you can go now”, I still didn’t want to test its boundaries. Facing a more experienced, more ruthless fairy, though, I probably would have resorted to it much quicker.

Maybe it isn’t altruism, not really. Maybe it’s just disguised selfishness. I did know what a fairy owes you if you save their life before I pulled Eira out of a freezing river. Maybe I wasn’t trying to bring Selene back because it was kind, but to assuage the guilt of all the times I’ve been the changeling, stealing a family’s child from them. Maybe it’s all just self-serving favors traded back and forth.

Then again, I’ve lived long enough to know that motivations aren’t always the point.

“Because,” I said, “you are young, Lady Cassida, and you don’t know what saving a life is worth yet.” I led Selene across the room. “When I open this door, I expect us both to be back safely in the forest where I stepped into Fae. Understood?”

“Understood,” she said dully. I reached for the handle and paused.

“I’d save that memory,” I said. “I think in another couple centuries, you might actually understand it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Would love a comment and a kudos if you've read this <3


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